Cycle Oz Day 11 – Beans beans are good for your heart...

It was a cold night but I was asleep early, which was good because I got a 5am wake up call by all the roosters hanging around the camp ground! I managed to drift back to sleep for a while, and I hoped that the sun would dry off my tent a bit. There was so much condensation.

My phone battery is officially buggered. Normally when fully charged and left over night on airplane mode, in the morning it would still be 100%, but this morning it read 22%. So the battery isn’t holding its charge. I’ve had a long time blog follower and all round thoroughly nice man donate some money to me so I can get it sorted out, which I am so grateful and overwhelmed by. Hopefully I will make it to Melbourne with it like this as that’s the first opportunity I will have to get it fixed.

By 9:30am I realised that the sun wasn’t coming out today and the sky was pretty grey, and after calculating that I had now been lying down for 17 hours and asleep for 10 of those, it was probably time to get up!

I reluctantly packed away my wet tent and pedalled off. This is the first day I didn’t bother with the GPS. All I had to do was pedal down the Princes Highway until I got to Cann River and that’s exactly what I did. It was another really quiet day on the roads and most people moved right the way over the other side to pass me. Something I do need to mention is people beeping their horns. I wish they wouldn’t. I assume most of it is in a friendly manner, but how am I supposed to know what you mean. Are you just saying hello, or are you angry, or are you trying to warn me of something, or are you just trying to scare me by blasting your horn the moment you pass me – yes people do that. I ignore all horns.

The temperature was cool but a long fairly gentle climb over the first 10k warmed me up. Not enough to take me coat off though. The road felt less like a main road and more like a windy country road, especially as I was in the shade of the gum forests for the majority of the day.

A big ascent was followed by a big descent and I had to stop half way down and layer up because it was freezing. The only things that came on and off for the rest of the day were my full finger gloves. It seems as I’m turning the corner and heading west now, rather than south, the wind has picked up. The cycling was pretty easy today, and I could have gone further, although my undercarriage is feeling pretty tender today and less time in the saddle will hopefully do it some good. I took all the chances I could today to lift myself off the saddle. It’s no pain, it just feels uncomfortable with the constant pressure on the fanjita.

Also, there was a free campsite at Cann River, with toilets and water. I had been super thirsty today for the first time on this trip. The road was fairly flat until a long descent into town. By the time I arrived I was really cold and my toes were like blocks of ice. It was early, about 2pm, so I found a cafe and got a hot chocolate and on a whim ordered beans on toast, with cheese. I had only eaten a cereal bar and some jelly snakes today and I wasn’t even that hungry, but it was comforting and helped to warm me up. Beans and cheese on crappy white bread with lots of butter really is a meal of the gods. It’s so good. Americans you are really missing out.

Glad I’m not staying there!

I stayed in there for a while keeping warm, not wanting to pitch my soggy tent. They let my plug in my phone so I stayed in there until they closed at 4pm and cycled over the bridge to the free campground that used to be a caravan park.

I had made a really silly mistake this morning, something I really should have known better. I put my wet tent in the same pannier as all my sleep stuff, so now my sleep clothes had wet patches on, my mattress was wet and I was unhappy.

Actually I was more unhappy that I realised and I burst into tears. It was definitely about more than just the wet tent. I’m not feeling tip top, but I can’t put my finger in why exactly, just feeling under the weather as they say. I’m also missing home, and people. The cycling trip is quite lonely, it’s been great spending the evenings with people, but on days like today I haven’t really spoken to anyone. I feel like all my friends are really distant (aside from a couple of really good ones) and I feel a bit like I’m losing them. Do they resent me for missing out on so much? I feel like things are running away from me and there are tasks I have to do that are building up and getting in top of me. I’ve also been cycling for 8 days straight now without a break, so I’m probably – as my mum would say – overtired, and ready for a day off. (Hopefully I will get that day off in 3 days time). My mind went over all sorts of things, and I had a really good cry. It was a proper sobby, snotty, self-indulgent cry, I let it all out and started to feel a bit better. Started to regain my sense of perspective.

I cooked some noodles, even though I wasn’t hungry, and I managed to eat quite a few things, even though I wasn’t hungry. I fancied a bit of escapism, remember Simon and Anita who I stayed with in Kiama, well they published a book about their overland journey from England to Australia and I have it on kindle, so I settled into my sleeping bag and read that. It’s even more enjoyable now we have met and I can imagine him telling me the story.

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663 million people across the globe are living without access to clean, safe water. That’s 1 in 10 people. A child dies every 90 seconds from a water related disease. One third of the worlds population – 2.4 billion people – don’t have access to adequate sanitation.

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